Research Profile of the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences
The Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences (WiSo Faculty) of Cologne University is the largest and most prestigious of its kind in Germany. True to its mission statement, “Innovation for society”, the Faculty traditionally combines theoretical groundwork with applied, practice-oriented research.
Eugen Schmalenbach and Erich Gutenberg, the founding fathers of modern business studies (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) in Germany, were both members of the WiSo Faculty, and the famous German sociologists Leopold von Wiese, Max Scheler, René König and Erwin K. Scheuch also taught here. The 
German Council of Economic Experts was chaired consecutively by the Cologne Faculty members Hans Karl Schneider, Herbert Hax and Juergen B. Donges.
In 2005, the Cologne economist Axel Ockenfels was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for his outstanding scientific accomplishments in the fields of Experimental Economic Research and Market Design.
The Research Training Groups “Social Order and Life Chances in Cross-National Comparison” (SOCLIFE) and “Risk Management” are both based at the WiSo Faculty, and are funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG); the Cologne Graduate School, on the other hand, is sponsored by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Under the auspices of the Max Planck Society, graduates of the Faculty work with doctorands of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in the “International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy” (IMPRS-SPCE).
Numerous affiliations with non-university institutes as well as memberships in the scientific advisory boards of German federal ministries generate lively exchanges of thought and close collaborations between theory and practice.